Three beats campus media should start — and how

First, I propose beat reporting on three topics either much on the minds or very important to college students but severely under-reported by student media. Then, I answer the obvious question, “Can we really find enough stories about that to make it a regular beat?”

The environment. Ask students what they’re concerned about in the world, and this is one of the top answers. And they want to do something about it. But what? Answer that question, and you’ve got a loyal audience. (See below.)

As design guru Tim Harrower asks students in his seminars, “Are you putting out your grandfather’s newspaper?” I have the same question about how we look at content in college media. Yes, in the old days it could be difficult to launch a beat without a steady supply of government meetings and press releases to produce “stories” that fit the definition enforced by your newspaper.

Those days are gone.

The modern beat reporter writes “stories” but also has unprecedented opportunities to be a discussion leader/guide/curator thanks to the web and social media. Every beat reporter has (at least) three platforms:

The print product and/or the main website.

A beat blog.

Social media (at a minimum, Twitter).

A quick summary of how to start a college media beat, taking “the environment” as an example:

Provide unique content by focusing on the local. On your campus, you can be the best at telling students about local environmental groups and about the environmentally responsible (and irresponsible) practices of your college. This will be the basis of many stories for your print product and/or your newsroom’s main website. All this content also gets posted on your beat blog and linked in your social media stream.

Curate the most interesting content from elsewhere. Part of daily digital discipline (see earlier post here) is checking important sources every day. Identify favorite/important sources of environmental news and commentary, follow them on Twitter (my favorite social medium) and retweet (or repost in other SM) the items of most interest to your audience. For example, you as the environment beat reporter probably won’t link to every article you find about coal, but you would link to a ground-breaking or particularly comprehensive story about coal or one about colleges trying to replace coal with solar power. (Use a SM account devoted to your beat, not the “institutional” account of your newsroom. See my previous rant about college journalists’ social media mistakes.) And use Google Alerts to find stories from places you don’t ordinarily monitor.

‘Curate-plus’ when appropriate. I don’t know if I coined that term or stole it. Anyway, I use “curate-plus” to mean what used to be called “localizing” — adding local reporting to a national (usually wire service) story. In the digital world, it often means simply using your background knowledge to add value. Explain to YOUR readers why the story you’re linking to is particularly relevant to them or to your college. (HuffPost College and Jezebel do this very well.) Link to your previous stories if relevant.

Engage the audience. Ask for their questions about local practices. (“Why aren’t there recycling bins near the gym exit where everyone leaves the game holding plastic bottles?”). Get answers from appropriate authorities and hold their feet to the fire if necessary. Follow your most active readers on Twitter or Facebook, etc., and repost generously items like “Earth Club meets at 2 p.m. Friday,” and their photos of a stream cleanup or a guest speaker. Engagement becomes reporting, which draws more readers, who increase your engagement — hey, now we’re getting somewhere!

In short, the modern student media beat reporter need not crank out a “story” about a topic every day (or week). Instead, she follows a daily discipline of monitoring her topic and engaging her audience. Prediction: It won’t be long before she has more material for original reporting than she ever would using her grandfather’s newspaper’s beat system.